THANK YOU FOR SUBSCRIBING

Evolution of Marketing Departments as Sales Partners

By Jon Kramer, CMO, RockTenn

You start where you always start. Objectives are the roadmap to success. If the objectives are not clear, it’s hard to understand what tools to use. Similarly, if you don’t know where you are going, it doesn’t matter what vehicle you are going to use—you are never going to get there.

"We are aggressively following shopper tracking technology as it morphs from video to mobile"

Tools for Success
In order to be successful, a marketing department needs to enlist the support and drive advocacy among key constituencies, sales and manufacturing supply chain. One important rallying cry might be “fail fast, fail cheap” as with all the new tools available, it’s hard to be “efficient,” and go broad and deep at the same time.

Team Value for Modern Marketing
Marketing today is no different than it has ever been. There are now more tools to execute communication programming. It’s easy to get side tracked with all the “pretty baubles” that are available to execute communications programming. What is important, is that the team stays on task, and is committed to performing against agreed objectives evaluated by strict metrics.

Challenges in Prospect
The major challenge today is that there are so many overlapping solutions. It seems like every day there is another resource to track behavior and analyze program impact. Based on this, there is bound to be a shakeout where “best in class” wins. My wish is that mobile analytics would get more robust and a clear winning solution would emerge.

Creation of Relevant Solutions
We would like to better understand display compliance. What is the driver for retail support, what percent of in-store material truly gets up, and their underlying impact on sales? We create solutions that are truly relevant—have to have vs. nice to have. We hence start with an end in mind; what is the burning need vs. what can we do within the existing wheelhouse. Know what Works and doesn’t We are aggressively following shopper tracking technology as it morphs from video to mobile. The ability to better understand the impact of in-store stimuli and what works and doesn’t is a major industry opportunity.

Morphing in Marketing
The biggest change has been how the job has evolved from being a sales resource, to becoming actively involved with customers face-to-face. Marketing departments have evolved to become true sales partners with responsibility to drive revenue through client interface.